A GREAT ECONOMIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25952, 19 September 1945, Page 6

A GREAT ECONOMIST

BARON KEYNES OF TILTON The financial discussions between Great Britain and America, which are at present proceeding in Washington,'have once more brought Lord Keynes into public view as one of the greatest living authorities on the science of economics. A brief summary of his outstanding career and varied interests is given in the accompanying article.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, Baron " Keynes of Tilton, C. 8., M.A., F.8.A., is probably the only economist of our time whose name has become a household word. His recent return to the United States with Lord Halifax to conduct negotiations on the situation arising out of the termination of Lend Lease, undoubtedly emphasised that distinction. The people of Britain knew that their case was being presented by as shrewd an economic thinker as the modern world has produced. Baron Keynes can claim vast experience in international economics. He served on important commissions and committees and was principal representative of Britain's Treasury at the Versailles Peace Conference after the last war. He was then profoundly opposed to the financial and reparations clauses which were later embodied in the Treaty of Versailles. After 25 years he is once more striving to secure a fair economic settlement for a postwar world.

Maynard Keynes was born at Cambridge, on June 5. 1883. He is the eldest son of Professor John Neville Keynes, Registrar of Cambridge University, and Florence Ada, daughter of the late Rev. John Brown, D.D. His younger brother is the distinguished surgeon, Geoffrey Keynes. He was educated at Eton, where he was a Foundation Scholar, and at King’s College, Cambridge, passing out as Twelfth Wrangler in 1905, and later winning a Fellowship of the College. During his time at Cambridge ne was president of the Union —the University’s debating society. In 1908 he passed the civil service entrance examination and entered the India Office, where he worked in the Revenue Department under Sir Thomas Holderness for two years. At the end of that time, however, he resigned from the India Office and returned to Cambridge to study and teach. In 1912 he became editor of the Economic Journal, the quarterly journal of the Royal Economic Society, of which Keynes is secretary. He has remained editor ever since. Book Gained World Fame Just before the last war he was a member of the Royal Commission - on Indian Finance and Currency, of which Austen Chamberlain was chairman, and in the same year, 1913, he wrote his first book, “Indian Currency and Finance,” which is still a standard work. During the last war (from 19151919) he was attached to the Treasury, being awarded the C.B. in 1917. He acted as its principal representative at the Paris Peace Conference up till June 7, 1919, and also as deputy for the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Supreme Economic Council. Owing, however, to his disapproval of the policy adopted at the Peace Conference, he resigned from his post, and it was not until the spring of 1940 that he became associated once more with the Government. This disapproval of the economic and financial clauses of the Treaty of Versailles he voiced publicly in his book. “The Economic Consequences of the Peace ” (published in December, 1919), a work which brought its author world-wide fame. The book ran into five editions in the first 12 months, and was translated into 11 languages. It produced a storm of criticism, both adverse and favourable. Keynes himself is reported to have said, a long time afterwards: “ I woke up like Byron, famous and disreputable. I remained disreputable for 20 years. But in 1937 I grew sick, and when I got up from my bed two years later the world had caught up with me.”

After leaving the Government service Keynes devoted himself to economics, building up for himself an almost unique reputation both as a theoretical economist and a practical financier. In all his written works, as well as his lectures, he expounded fearlessly his independent views, his criticisms and his suggested reforms. During the last two- decades, most debates among professional economists on monetary and general economic theory usually become debates between the

supporters and opponents of Keynes. To his way of thinking the supreme and over-riding aim of economic policy should be the maintenance of full employment, and it is significant that his economic theories were drawn upon in the planning of Roosevelt's New Deal. Deferred Pay Plan

In 1925, Keynes married Lydia Lopokova, of Russian Ballet fame. Lopokova was educated for dancing in the School of the Czar’s Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg under the famous ballerina Tamara Karsavina. The Keynes spent their honeymoon in Leningrad, and while there Keynes was reported to have said that the Soviet Government must moderate its so-called “ principles of Soviet policy,” and adopt a path of compromise. Two months after the outbreak of the recent war, he published three articles in The Times containing progosals for a plan of compulsory savings. if this plan, he wrote: “ The complete scheme now proposed, including universal family allowances in' cash, the accumulation of working-class wealth under working-class control, and cheap ration of necessaries, and a capital levy (or tax) after the war, embodies an advance towards economic equality greater • than any which we have made in recent times. . . .”

There has been much criticism of the scheme, but it has not been rejected either by experts or by the public. Indeed, as the “ deferred pay ” plan it became national policy. In July, 1940, Keynes once again became adviser to the Treasury. In May of the following year he went to Washington, at the request of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to examine the working of the Lease and Lend Bill. In September, 1941, he succeeded Lord Stamp, who was killed in an air raid, as a director of the Bank of England. Not only is Maynard Keynes an economist and financier of international repute, but he also takes a profound and active interest in music, tne ballet and the stage, and is a connoisseur and collector of paintings. He became a Trustee of the National Gallery in November 1941, and in February, 1942, he succeeded Lord McMillan as Chairman of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (“ CEMA ”). Moreover he was responsible for the building of and is the chairman of the Arts Theatre at Cambridge, which has provided the University with a badlyneeded theatre of its own in the centre of the town.

He received a barony in the Birthday Honours of May, 1942, and took the title of Baron Keynes of Tilton. In July, 1944, Lord Keynes was chairman of the United Kingdom delegation to the Bretton Woods Monetary and Financial Conference. There he was chairman of the commission appointed to consider questions relating to the proposed Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “ Keynes is working,” an American journal had commented a few months earlier, “with all the brilliance and stamina at his command to the end that history shall not repeat itself.”